The map itself was created by the lovely and ever-patient Upvoteanthology, while the ideas were created by me. I did not create the map itself.
This map resulted from an odd desire to have all the areas that I had a specific interest in, be in one country. New York, Louisiana, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, Wales, New Zealand. The other lands were added for two reasons. 1) Relevancy to those who I consider my closest friends (Kaiser K of Florida, Abhakhazia of Illinois, CanadianTory of New Brunswick, DTanza of California), 2) Made more sense in reality than omitting them out (Ohio, Wisconsin, part of Canada, the rest of Britain and Ireland).
Now, just because the country was essentially in concept my "dream combination", didn't mean that it would be my dream country. Its expanse meant that the only plausible way for it to get that big was by militant expansionism. Thus I portray it below as a selectively aggressive country with Lord Palmerston's OTL luck.
When I first saw the amazing map made by Upvoteanthology, it showed to me that I had to come up with a plausible reason for Nueva Aragon and the UAIC to be that specific size and shape. Thus I decided to cut my newly-created belligerent Top Nation down to size by having an American Revolution equivalent in Nueva Aragon, a result of Albion-Hibernia taking too much of a bite of Spain's colonial empire, essentially. For the UAIC, I figured that a country so focused on expansionism would have somewhat unstable internal politics, and I factored this in my present analysis of the country, but decided to have a militant Communist uprising in the agrarian regions of the Plains, which results in Albion-Hibernia's many enemies deciding to take it as an advantage.
Thus the Grand War, this world's equivalent to World War One, happened. Albion-Hibernia did have allies, and they ensured that even though the North American realms were divided into three by the UAIC's successful independence and Denmark gaining the Northern Territories, the enemies failed to squeeze anything else out.
The cultural re-evaluation I describe here was not as smooth as the write-up may suggest. The name of Aurelia may sound forced to you, but it was created before any map was made, and lets face it, country names can be completely made up.
The war with China was designed to give Aurelia Hong Kong, but in a deeper sense, it gave them back some of their lost glory and pride and ensured that they would be recognized as Top Nation, something I always intended for them to be seen as.
This world is not a nice one. Expansionism is still accepted as the norm, even if colonialism is frowned at those days. Annexing places are seen as normal (Putin's invasion of Crimea would have been seen as normal in that world). But it has its' upper side. Having an United Nations with more teeth means that world peace can actually be a bit more than just a moment, even if it tends to favor the aggressor more than the defender.
Cultural and linguistic diversity is higher than OTL and globalisation's effects on local cultures are prevented or minimalised. "Big Green" rivals Big Coal and Big Oil for energy prices thanks to Aurelia's obsession with the Power of the Atom in the peaceful 1940s, leading to huge investment.
But overall, it is a mixed world, even if more unsure than ours. Welcome to the world that the High Kingdom of Aurelia lives in.
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The "PoD" (it's really more of an Ill Bethisad rule of cool thing, but whatevs) is in the far-past.
The Anglo-Saxon advance into Britain is stopped early, and they only have the east coast ("Saxland").
"Britain" is united under an ambitious and educated monarch who brands his entire realm "Albion". The Saxons remain independent, but cowed.
Pictland is annexed in the 1300s, Hibernia (once known as Eire) fully by the 1600s, Saxland in 1419.
Albion (later the Federated Realms of Albion and Hibernia) gains a reputation as a belligerent player, but also a Machiavellian one.
Constantly pushing further and further using aggressive tactics portraying it as somewhat unpredictable and belligerent, it gained far more lands than it actually colonised. Only Nova Hibernia, Chesapeake and Pennsylvania was actually theirs, the rest were conquered over time.
In the late 18th century, the coalition of nations sick of Albion-Hibernia's belligerence (which gained it everything north of Mexico and east of Alaska) worked to undermine it, and saw a golden opportunity in the former-Spanish colony of Nueva Aragon.
Stirring stuff up there, funding revolutionaries, and all that, and once it declared independence, they jumped to its side. In the end, Albion-Hibernia
lost. An unthinkable event has happened. The establishment was in shock.
They had to recognize Nueva-Aragonese independence and cede Powell-Land to the Dutch (now called Zuidland).
For the next hundred years, the Federated Realms were quiet. Not weak, but not in their typical Palmerston-y belligerent extremism.
And then the Californian War of Independence and Mexican Revolt happened.
Albion-Hibernia's swiftness to take revenge on Spain, taking the entirety of California and forcing Spain to recognize Mexico's independence was humiliating to the once-great Kingdom, something A-H took great glee in.
Annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii, forcing France to give up on Aotearoa and threatened Russia until it sold Alaska. The old Albion-Hibernia was back, and lusting for revenge on the world that so wronged it.
It may have talked a big game, intimidating its opponents, but internally, A-H was a mess by the late 19th century. The Liberals and Conservatives similarly supported A-H's belligerence, even if for superficially-different reasons. The farmers were disgruntled and radicalising, the workers desired justice and democracy and the subjected regions had people talking of independence.
It all came crashing down in the 1920s. The Farmer-Liberal government failed to appease the radicalised farmers and miners of the West, and they declared independence as the Union of Agrarian and Industrial Communes. The Communist Party split in half as the Western MPs walked out of Parliament in solidarity with the revolutionaries. Even when the rising Democratic Party roundly criticised "blood-tainted revolutions", it was too late. The UAIC was rising up and seizing the means of production by the gun, killing any who opposed them.
Albion-Hibernia's many rivals jumped on it and tried to take what they wanted. Nueva Aragon, their creation, was not one of them as A-H knew that Nueva Aragon presented a juicy start to cut into the industrial belly of Albish North America. Thus it was on very cordial relations with A-H.
Five years of A-H's enemies trying to cut the belligerent Top Nation down once again. They succeeded in breaking apart Albish North America into three as the UAIC gained independence, but the stalemate forced them to give up any other ambitions.
Albion-Hibernia's remains came together in New Amsterdam and decided to have a new Constitutional Convention, "so none of this precious Realm of ours will shatter once more in such turmoil as has Just Happened".
In the end, the realm was federated instead of having de facto devolution. The Viceroyalties were created, the previous Provinces (with considerable autonomy) were abolished and Albion-Hibernia itself died.
"Aurelia is the new name. A name that transcends everything, for it represents an idea, that of a Listening Government."
Thus was born the High Kingdom of Aurelia in 1932. The old A-H's belligerence failed to carry over to its' successor, and instead, the world saw a far different country. Albion-Hibernia was a country of war, while Aurelia was a country of culture.
A country that believed in "Peace with Honour." Namely, peace backed up by steel.
Despite its' belligerence, A-H was a popular place for immigrants to go to, as they saw it as a country of prosperity and of good work, and of carefully judged war. It was belligerent merely because it had lots of opportunities.
Many of the European states were fuelled by poorly-judged wars and their soil were quite red from shed blood.
After Aurelia's birth and the world had to get used to an extremely warlike country becoming one of peace, Aurelia's economy thrived while others' suffered in the Depression of 1942. Even more immigrants came to the country.
In the late 1950s, Aurelia went to war again, and against China, the growing superpower. Many thought Aurelia would fail badly. They seem to have forgotten what Aurelia
is. It may be a country of peace, but its' steel is blood-tested and cried once more in the fields of China.
By 1964, China was broken, civil wars were happening and this once-great superpower was pleading for peace. The great city of Hong Kong, a formerly Portuguese city taken over by China, was now annexed into Aurelia.
Aurelia, along with its' former enemies (still in shock over how it broke China) formed the Assembly of Nations in 1968, "an organization for world peace". To its' credit, world peace has indeed happened, even if it was broken repeatedly by wars.
One reason for Aurelia not being a belligerent country is that it knows it cannot afford that anymore. Its' national unity is low, Quebec was close to leaving, and the noises coming from Nova Hibernia is worrying.
But Aurelia is Top Nation, and the world is indeed its' oyster. It just came at a high price.
(Full size image
here.)
